The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration has destroyed over 158,000 passports because they have run out of storage space.
Simon Mundeyi, the spokesperson of the directorate told journalists that the passpoers were worth an estimated Shs 40 billion.
He said another 72,580 passports are set for destruction if their owners fail to claim them while 60,000 passports had been returned by labour export companies after their owners failed to find employement abroad.
“They applied for them and handed them over to labour export companies but these companies have since failed to process travel for them,” Mundeyi said.
Mundeyi said the owners of the unclaimed passports have six months to collect them or else they will be destroyed.
He emphasized that they have been reaching out to the applicants to come and pick the passports with little avail.
“So what do we do? We don’t have where to keep these passports,” he said.
